Former Manchester Man Misses Deal On 'Shark Tank'

A man who grew up in Manchester pitched his design for a bed heating and cooling system Tuesday night to the shrewd panel of investors on ABC's "Shark Tank," but failed to finalize a deal.

Mark Aramli of Newport, R.I., was looking for an investment of $250,000 for a 10 percent stake in his company, BedJet. The sharks, including Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran, liked the invention but had concerns about bringing the product to a retail market.

Aramli said in and interview with The Courant Tuesday, that he worked on NASA space-shuttle space suits as an engineer in the late 1990s at Hamilton Standard in Windsor Locks. The space suit helped to keep astronauts comfortable in space by using cooling and heading climate systems, he said.

But it was actually a drafty Santa Monica, Calif., night in 2001 that gave him the idea for the BedJet Climate Control System. Aramli dreaded getting into a cold bed on one of the rare cool southern California nights.

So, he put a fan heater under the bed covers and forgot about it for about 15 minutes.

"I'm lucky I didn't burn the bedroom down," Aramli said. "That is a really, really dangerous thing to do. But when I got into those sheets, I was like, 'Oh my God, this feels so good.'"

This video, produced by BedJet, explains how the system cools and heats beds, controlled from a bedside remote or bluetooth-enabled smartphone app.

This video, produced by BedJet, explains how the system cools and heats beds, controlled from a bedside remote or bluetooth-enabled smartphone app.

Aramli started thinking about some type of system that would force hot air under bed sheets, at the foot of the bed. Then, in 2013, Aramli said he visited his mother at her drafty, century-old Manchester home where she was laid up in bed for a few weeks after surgery.

He said his mother tried electric blankets and heating pads, but was either too hot, too cold, or there were too many wires on the bed. That's when he started taking parts from an old hand dryer, like the one you'd find in a public restroom, to create new heating system.

"The key to the invention is keeping the electricity out of the bed," he said, adding later, "You make the heat, and you make the air somewhere else and then you send it into the bed, and that's how you keep it safe."

So, a small motor that generates hot air is placed under the bed. It forces hot air up a tube, under the covers to the corner of the bed — not on the bed. Separately, the system can be used to cool temperatures under the bed by circulating room-temperature air under the sheets, Aramli said.

The heating systems are already in production and have been shipped to retailers. The first batch of 600 units were made in December and about 350 of those are sold and allocated to pre-orders, Aramli said. The systems are priced from $499 to $1,100, depending on the features selected, like cooling and heating system for each side of the bed.

Aramli has a bachelor's degree from the University of Connecticut School of Engineering and a master's degree in business administration from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

He has also worked for Capstone Turbine Corp., making heating and power systems for buildings.

"I've got a long history with heating things," he said.

Aramli said he was contacted by a producer for Shark Tank about a year ago and the episode was filmed in September in Southern California. The television producer noticed a Kickstarter fundraising campaign for the BedJet that Aramli put online and the idea seemed intriguing, he said.

"They reached out to us and invited us to play," he said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story referenced Hamilton Sundstrand and should have noted that the company has since become part of UTC Aerospace Systems. Also, the company name was misspelled.